Direction
by crackers4jenn
Summary: Sam and Dean get into a little tiff concerning their lack of real direction in life. Season 1.


"I'm tired."

Dean looks to the seat next to him where there sitteth his little brother Sammy, all slumped against the car door and peering pitifully out the streaky, dirt-stained window. Like one of them sad, sad puppies in some pet store at the mall that you just can't help but feel sorry for, floppy mutt-hair and all. "And?" he says, and his words have this playful, teasing edge to them. "I'm not rolling out the red carpet, Sammy, if that's what you're waiting for."

Sam just shakes his head, though there's that slight roll of his eyes. "I'm talking complete and total mental exhaustion." There's a short silence, Sam straightening against the seat. Then, more quietly, "Don't you feel it too?"

Dean looks away. "No," is his quick, gruff answer.

"I know you do."

"So?" He shoots Sam a dark look, one that's chockful of _If you're as smart as all them fancy college papers say you are, you'd know this is about the time to quit your freaking yapping_. "I'm tired. Big deal."

"It _is_ a big deal!" Sam insists, and he's getting all fidgety in his seat. Probably that lone dinner of a Snickers bar he had about two hours ago finally kicking in, fueled by its soda sidekick Mountain Dew. "We're out here," Sam says, his eyes wide in that overly-expressive way they always get when he's trying to be serious and making a point, "all the time, and Dad is who-knows-where--"

"He's working," Dean cuts him off, used to this recurring argument. Fourth one in half as many days, if his memory's right.

"So he says."

Dean's eyebrows shoot high, and shoot far, all but touching the beginnings of his hairline. "'So he says'?"

"Oh, c'mon," Sam whines, "this isn't that lecture. This is part of the lecture that leads to the _I'm tired_ lecture, the lecture that I very much want to have right now."

"Well too damn bad. You don't just throw out those words, Sam, and expect me not to react."

"Of course not," is Sam's bitter reply. "Dad's perfect soldier, right? There's probably some protocol on how to react, right? Some trigger that I set off--"

"Yeah, that trigger is you being an asshole. And, hey, trigger set!"

"Me?! I'm the--? Look at you! All I said was _one_ thing--"

"Please, don't even give me that," Dean cuts him off, not even giving him the courtesy of tearing his eyes off the road. It's three in the morning, he's dead tired, which, believe me, he can feel through each and every square inch of his haven't-showered-in-over-a-week body, and he's in no mood to deal with Sam's weekly tantrum. "Maybe I didn't go to college," he adds, both patronizing and sorta self-depricating, "but that doesn't mean I didn't get my share of the family brains."

"You know what? I'm so sick of this. I'm sick of fighting with you over dad--I'm sick of _him_ making us fight--"

"So now this is Dad's fault? You and your prebuscent, _boo-hoo_ crap that you lay on me every week?"

"If Dad didn't _put_ us in this position--"

Without any warning at all, Dean swerves off the road and into the side pocket, narrowly avoiding a lone street sign. The car engine hasn't even been cut, the car still lurching in its heavy forward movement, and Dean's already belting out, "Position?!" He lets out an easy laugh. "This is our job, Sammy boy. The hours suck, the pay sucks, the no-chick factor sucks, and every damn ugly ass demon that tries to kill us sucks--but it's _what we do_. It's what we know, and, I'm sorry, but this isn't some family obligation--"

Sam finally musters some of his own back. "Yes it is!" he says, twisted in his seat to blast Dean with the right amount of frustration. "It's exactly an obligation!"

"How?"

"This is what you want to do with your life?" he shoots back, some new kinda ploy that involves making Dean feel as low and small as possible about his lack of purpose or direction or extended education--anything Sam has and has done that Dean hasn't. "Play some demented role of Ghostbuster in a world where people still don't even know there's things that go bump in the night?" he continues hoarsely. "That's not a life, Dean. That's not a job!"

"It's mine," Dean retorts, his voice--given the cirumstances--freakishly calm and entirely reasonable. "It's Dad's."

Sam settles back into the curve of his seat, the leather groaning beneath him, and faces forward. Everything about him, from the thinness of his lips and the straight line of his shoulders to the way he stares hard and unblinkingly out the car window, is set in firm determination. "It's not mine," he tells him cooly, stubbornly.

Dean throws his hands up in the air. "Oh, here we go again. You know, you can be pretty selfish when you set your mind to it."

Sam gives him a long sideways look. "Selfish? Because I don't want to spend the rest of forever chasing after demons--"

"And saving lives?"

"It's not our responsibilty, Dean! You can't save everyone, and you can't waste your life making it a job to!"

Dean just stares at him. There's this part of him, this not-so-small part, that doesn't get how Sam can be so against what they do. How he can turn his back on it. Screw teenage rebellion, because Sam's well past that age. It goes beyond that.

Ask Dean if he wants a break, and he'll answer automatically. Hell yes. A break, two, hell, he'll go in for a month-long vacay if we're talking all expenses paid. But to break away from the family, to build yourself this whole other shiny, happy people life and forget about the darkness that made you who you are? Dean will never understand how Sam does it. How he did it, how he still wants to do it, despite everything they've been a firsthand witness to.

He feels the fight in him, even when he's asleep. And Sam... well, Sam wants to chock that up to brain feedings by their father. Wants to shove it down, wants to smother and cover it, pretend it doesn't exist.

Dean finally looks away, sticking the key back in the ignition. The silence is thick, even with a semi roaring past and rattling windshields. Without looking at his brother, he pulls the car back onto the road, gets them going the right way to Lawson. Then, "We try. Okay?"

Sam doesn't say anything, his shadowed, grim-looking face now staring out the car window again, but Dean doesn't care. He doesn't need Sam to get it, doesn't need _anyone_ to get it, because he justifies himself to no one. This is his life, and this will always be his life, and as long as freaky-deaky shit keeps popping up in newspapers, Dean's going to keep road-tripping it.

Little brother as a sidekick, or not. 


End file.
